Black Sea

The Black Sea plays an important part in the global wheat market and will likely become the global reference market for wheat in the future as yields and export capacity continue to grow. The below infographic highlight the key wheat producing regions, exports as a percentage of world export as well as the key producing area within the main countries of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. This highlights why markets are so sensitive to weather conditions in these regions and exportable surpluses. A lack of rainfall during April contributed to yield uncertainty and expectations for yield cuts, not only in the Black Sea but also the EU. Although following the March global wheat market demand driven price spike, markets in general fell back, the yield concerns have provided support to global European markets, preventing markets falling further and fully chasing down new crop maize prices. Paris milling wheat, and by extension, UK feed wheat futures have received additional support during May as those previous concerns about the dry April in the Black Sea have begun to be better quantified alongside dryness in Europe.